Have you ever been assigned ‘busy work?’ I despise doing ‘busy work’ It’s the type of work that doesn’t have a purpose except to keep you…well…busy. Sometimes this happens on a job...

March is a time when we may spend more time reflecting on Jesus’s sacrifice for us. And many use it as a time for self-assessment, considering Paul’s advice to us to, ‘Examine yourselves’....

An oft-cited and favourite verse in the Old Testament is found in the seldom-read book of Second Kings. Whether or not you’ve read the book of Kings, or if it’s been a long time, you are...

I was pleasantly surprised when a picture of a group of pelicans came up on my computer screen. They have always given me a sense of calm and peace; a feeling of God’s presence. As I gazed...

On three occasions in John’s gospel, Jesus uses the phrase ‘lifted up’. The first occasion is in the header scripture where he alludes to Moses putting a bronze snake on a pole during Israel’s...

There is a popular old hymn called ‘Count Your Blessings’. The chorus simply says: Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your blessings, see what God hath done.  A friend of mine...

Our header scripture provides a hope-filled vision of an innumerable multitude of people from all corners of the world standing before God’s throne in worship. This mosaic vision represents God’s...

You may have noticed some Christian authors and speakers are using the phrase ‘invite God’ to do this or that. One in particular tells us we should invite God into our prayer time. I find it...

What a wonderful thing communication can be, but as James mentioned here in chapter 3, the tongue can be a very wicked and uncontrolled thing. I would like to say that it must have been an issue...

Oscar Wilde once quipped, ‘I can resist anything but temptation.’ Thankfully this was not true of Jesus who was ‘…tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin.’...

Journeys of transformation often begin in a place of testing. The wilderness is not a place of punishment. It is a place of preparation. It is where noise fades, distractions fall away, and truth...

When the tires on your car get wonky, you take it to a shop and get them aligned. Our spines can become misaligned, and some people rely on a chiropractor to get them back where they should be. All...

‘There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met.’ This is one of my favourite quotes. So, when my daughter and I saw it written on the outside of a restaurant in Dublin, Ireland,...

One of my forms of exercise is to take walks with the dogs and an occasional cat or two. I spend a lot of time just trying to reign them in. Now that it is winter here, the fields are brown and...

Every human being knows that unless Jesus returns first, death is coming. It’s a topic that we don’t like to talk about, yet the Apostle Paul openly declares that it is the last enemy to be...

Some moments change everything. They lift the veil, revealing what has always been true but unseen. The mountain of transfiguration was one of those moments. Jesus led Peter, James, and John up a high...

By the time the apostle Paul was writing his first letter to his young protégé, Timothy, he was advanced in years and Timothy, who had been the apostle’s right-hand man for over two decades, was...

The phrase ‘trust everyone but cut the cards’ has been around for a long time, possibly even since the 19th century. Who knows, there may have been some version of it as early as Cain and Abel. It...

As we focus on the servant of the Lord spoken of here in Isaiah 42, we come to realise that it is speaking of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, who as the Son of God and maker of the heaven and...

In the Ancient Near East and Greco-Roman world salt held significant economic, social, and symbolic value. It was commonly used for: Preservation – Salt prevented decay in food, especially meat and...

There is a saying that goes, ‘Better well done than well said.’ This phrase wisely reminds us that words can sometimes be empty, and our actions often say much more about who we are. As believers,...

Most of the time when we use the word ‘overflowing’ we have a plumbing problem. I can’t really think of a time when it’s used in a positive way – glasses, rivers, swimming pools,...

The city of Corinth, in the first century, was a prominent commercial and cultural centre within the Roman Empire. It was characterised by economic prosperity, social hierarchy, and a strong emphasis...

Psalm 15 seems to be obsessed with a ‘who’ question. Namely, who can be in God’s presence? That’s a big question, and the psalmist explores the answer with a series of ‘who’ statements....

The National Gallery held an exhibition of some of Millet’s works over the summer. He was a nineteenth century French artist probably best known for his realistic, unsentimental paintings of...

The opening seven verses of Paul’s epistle to the church at Rome powerfully sets before us the whole nature and content of the gospel. In this section of the epistle, Paul introduces himself, first...

As children, we were often told to pay attention. Pay attention to what our parents said, to cars when crossing the street, to hot things we shouldn’t touch and many other important or dangerous...

Billy Graham, in his December 31 devotional in his book Unto the Hills said: ‘…we do not worship an absentee God.’ I fully agree with this statement. He said that the Christian would know...